New regulation in Indonesia ensures growth bitcoin transactions

An Indonesian financial regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (BAPPEBTI), announced on 18 February that it would introduce new regulations on cryptocurrencies.

The new regulations require cryptocurrency exchanges to be first registered and approved before they can operate, that cryptocurrencies are officially seen as commodities (trade goods) and that all exchanges must be anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) regulations. meet.

Indrasari Wisnu Wardhana, head of the Bappebti, says:

Indonesia wants to offer protection to people who want to invest in cryptocurrency, so they are not deceived by fraudulent sellers.

However, not everyone is equally happy with the new regulations. To start a new cryptocurrency exchange, a minimum capital is required. One that is many times higher than necessary to even start a regular bank; $ 106 million against $ 177,000.

Nevertheless, the news seems to have a major impact on the number of bitcoin (BTC) transactions in the country. Recent data from Coin Dance, a platform that tracks the weekly volumes of bitcoin exchange Localbitcoins, shows that the number of bitcoin transactions in Indonesia has increased enormously during the past week.

About 10.3 billion rupiah ($ 730,000) was traded in bitcoin in Indonesia last week. That’s more than double the 4.5 billion rupiah ($ 319,000) in the week before.

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) will still be banned in Indonesia. At the beginning of this month, South Korea also announced that it would continue to enforce the ban on ICOs.